Hearing devices are technical aids, which ameliorate congenital or hereditary hearing function impairments which are not amenable to causal therapy. Hearing devices amplify and modulate the sound, in other words the acoustic signal, upstream of the actual sense organ of the ear, the inner ear. Hearing devices consists here of one or several microphones, an electronic circuit, which has at least one analog or digital amplifier and one or several loudspeakers as well as an energy source for supplying these components.
A hearing device acoustician individually determines the audiometric characteristics of the ear for each patient and, with the aid of this, performs the optimal setting of the operating parameter(s) of the hearing device. Optimum speech intelligibility is generally aimed for here. The damaged hearing is however in many instances particularly sensitive to increased output levels. If the damaged hearing is provided with a hearing device which is adjusted for optimum speech intelligibility, the patient perceives this to be uncomfortable and will in some circumstances not use the hearing device.
The patent application DE 195 42 961. discloses a hearing device with a control unit, which, during a certain time interval, performs the adjustment of the operating parameters of the hearing device from a starting situation which is pleasant for the patient towards a target situation which is determined by the hearing device acoustician to be optimal. This adjustment process, also referred to as “training”, provides the hearing device wearer with a pleasant introduction into the use of the hearing device which is new to him/her.